Emulation of large-scale qubit registers with a phase space approach

Abstract

A phase-space approach is used and benchmarked for the simulation of the continuous-time evolution of large registers of qubits. It is based on a statistical ensemble of independent mean-field trajectories, where mean-field is introduced at the level of the qubits, substituting quantum fluctuations/correlations with classical ones. The approach only involves at worse a quadratic cost in the system size, allowing to simulate up to several thousands of qubits on a classical computer. It provides qualitatively accurate description of one-qubit observables evolutions, making it a useful reference in comparison to techniques limited to small qubit numbers. The predictive power is however less robust for multi-qubits observables. We benchmark the method on the $k$-local transverse-field Ising model (TFIM), considering a large variety of systems ranging from local to all-to-all interactions, and from weak to strong coupling regimes, with up to 2000 qubits. To showcase the versatility of the approach, simulations on 2D and 3D Ising models are also made.